Exhibiting a few frames of my life

Archive for the ‘Random Thoughts’ Category

It should be “I had a blog!” Though it sounds weird, but looking at the frequency of my posts in the blog, it’s past tense long ago. The last post I wrote in my blog was July 2011, the month Ayaat came to our life. Post that blog, it’s been almost a year and 10 months, and I haven’t written a single post in my blog.

What exactly went wrong that I stopped writing at all? I was never a writer, but liked to try to convert my thoughts into black and white whenever I got time. So, have I stopped thinking of late? May be, nowadays, the mind doesn’t get much time to think. Most of the time is consumed by office works, the rest I got, I like to spend with my family, especially my daughter, and what left I directly invest in TV series, though I’m not talking about Saas Bahu series.

If I think hard, it’s not only blog that I stopped for a long period of time. I’m finding it difficult to remember the name of the last book that I read completely. There’s a long list of books that I started and stopped abruptly in between, and I never saw their last page.

So, no blogging, no reading, what else? I’ve also become quite a bit distant from my guitar these days. It’s just last weekend, I realized that my guitar needs service and repair and the cause was my infrequent endeavor with the guitar. Although didn’t know what pushed me, I went out and got my guitar repaired, even ignoring the scorching heat of the day, which is sufficient to demotivate not to do things during Delhi summer.

So, among lots of no dos, I think I’ll try to revive my guitar playing a bit in the coming days. I don’t know whether I’ll become regular again to my blog and books, but right now thinking about giving them a try too. So, I’ll wait and see….

I have not done many things in my life. There are things that I want to do and there are some things that I can’t do and moreover there are things that I used to do but have not done for a long time. This thought came to my mind while I was going through a regular DailyPost blog of WordPress where a blogger posted his latest write-up on the things he didn’t do in the last one year. Immediately I thought, “There are lots of things too that I haven’t done in my last one year”. I tried to conjure the things I liked to do but hadn’t done in the last one year. Lots of things came to my mind, but I would like to post only about 10 things that I missed doing in the last one year.

Going Home (Guwahati): I have not gone to Guwahati for more than a year. The last time I visited Guwahati was on April 2010 on the occasion of a friend’s wedding. It’s not like that I didn’t try or took leaves to go home during this time. In fact, I booked tickets to Guwahati for 3 three times last year. But circumstances changed so frequently that each time I had to cancel the tickets.

Out for a Long Drive: I was planning to go for a long drive before I bought my car. I used to go for drives (not so long though) whenever I got a chance to come out with my dad’s car at home. But it’s been ages and now when I’ve got my own car, still I’m unable to manage time for a long drive. Sometimes I wonder “When you got time, you don’t have the resource; when you have the resource, you have to run after time”. This is the tragedy of life and for this I strongly believe doing things when I feel liking to do them rather waiting for the right time. So, the time for a long drive has now come, I guess.

Played Tennis: I used to play tennis in the Delhi IIT with one of my good friends. He lived in the IIT campus with his sister, a research associate in IIT. I really enjoyed playing tennis there. But from the past one year or more, both my friend and I somehow stuck in personal and professional commitments in such way that we hardly got any chance to play tennis. Also, during this time I moved to Vaishali, Ghaziabad, which is quite far from IIT Delhi, minimizing the possibility of resuming playing tennis :-). Now, I got the rackets, set of balls, with no ground around as well as interested person to play tennis.

Took a Holiday: Strange but true; I’ve not taken a holiday for more than a year. There have been a few occasions when I took off a day or two due to illness, marriage, or some other functions. That’s all.

Celebrated Bihu with Friends: The main reason behind this is that during Bihu for the past couple of years I wasn’t able to visit Guwahati. The 2nd reason is most of my friends are in B’lore, while I and a few of my friends are left in Delhi. Also, there’s no holiday on Bihu here. So, ultimately Bihu celebration is confined to my family only for the last couple of occasions.

Visited NSD: Yasmin and I used to visit NSD occasionally to watch plays. A couple of our very good friends also used to accompany us to those plays. In fact, they inspired us to instill this interest in me. But it has been a year or so that we haven’t visited NSD.

Updated my Photo Blog: Sometimes I forget that I have a photo blog registered with BlogSpot. I started the blog after our office trip to Mashobra, Shimla last year. But since then the photo blog has become a still blog without any updates. I think I should not delay further to update the blog.

Wrote more than 3 blogs in a month: This is perhaps dated back to the inception of my blog. I never wrote more than three blogs in a month in the WordPress blog. There are a few months when my blogging is nil. This year I will definitely going to break this jinx of three blogs. Wish me luck 🙂

Did any origami: Yasmin is good in Origami. She has a couple of Origami books. I also gave her a book on Origami. Watching her making beautiful paper structures using Origami, I became interested in Origami. Many a times, I also joined her and tried to create some shapes and structures. Doing Origami together with Yasmin was fun. But it’s been more than a year since I haven’t done any Origami. It’s a good utilization of one’s free time and when something is created with paper without any cutting or tearing, it feels very good. I think it’s time to go back to the good old Origami days.

Played Cards: I started playing cards, in fact learned how to play different card games during my hostel days. They are really exciting and addictive too sometimes; but overall, you can kill your whole night by playing cards, which me and my friends did many times in the hostel. After marriage, I taught Yasmin and my sister how to play cards and instantly they became interest in the game. We, three, usually used to play a game called ‘hazari’ (or thousand); it was like we had to play a game of ‘hazari’ after dinner almost every day, otherwise the dinner wouldn’t be going to digest :-). But as my sister went home for a longer period and we two got busy with our works a bit more, the frequency of playing ‘hazari’ minimizes, and in the past one year I hardly remember when I played a good game of card. But I’ll going to clear the dust from my pack of cards soon.

The moment Dhoni hit the 2nd ball of Kulasekara over the long on boundary on Saturday evening, I realized what I was missing in my life for so many years – the joy of Victory, the happiness of winning, the feeling of being a part of a cricket (not exclusive) team. The calm face of Dhoni as he hit the six, reminded me of our university days. We were crazy cricket lovers and were the champions for three years in a row. In fact, I feel proud to say that we were only defeated by once in three years, that too on a league match. So, being the undisputed cricket champs of our university days, I was nostalgic, ecstatic, and at that moment I really missed all my friends with whom I cherished those memories. If the Genie of Aladin came out at that moment and asked me what I wanted, I wouldn’t think twice to ask him to take me back to the university days. I’m still overwhelmed and would like to cut short my post here only thanking Team India, and especially Dhoni who instilled my passion for sports once again with his cool, calm, and calculated leadership.

It’s been almost two months (like ages for me) that I haven’t written anything in my blog. It’s not like I haven’t tried. I started writing on many topics, like my recent days in New Jersey and New York, about how crazy and unjust as Indian fans we are, about one of my favorite TV character Mr. Brown (remember Mind Your Language). However, not a single of these topics has seen the last period. Don’t know why, but somehow I’ve lost the enthusiasm to write. May be I’m stressed out; there’s a lot reason to be so. But being stressed out really never bothers me. So, why now, still no clue. I think I’ve to try harder to bring back myself to my blog. There are lots of ideas in my mind to improve the blog, like adding a couple of new pages, updating the widgets, writing a post on something entirely new, and many more. I should have to focus on doing at least a few of these things in the coming days.

Also, I’ve to update my daily routine to a large extent. I’m like immersed in the world of crime and detection with series like Sherlock, Criminal Minds, Inspector Linley Mysteries, Dexter, Psych, and a few other similar ones. No doubt, I enjoy them very much, but it also affected me to some extent. Like, I’ve become obsessed with watching Criminal Minds. Every night, I didn’t go to sleep without watching a couple of Criminal Minds episodes. Unlike other crime and mystery series, this series is something which focuses more on the criminal psych, their background and the reason to become criminals, mostly serial killers. In a way it is disturbing. Sometimes, I wonder, how come a person can do such a heinous crime. Even I’d bad dreams quite a few times after watching such an episode. But still my obsession with CM has not lessened. This not only hampers my regular sleep but also affects many of my favorite activities.

I think I’ve to come out of these and the sooner is better for me. This is the first step of my quest to get myself back into normal blogging and doing my other favorite stuffs like, playing my guitar, a little bit of singing, and gyming for sure. No doubt I can’t escape from crime and detection series, but I’ve to keep control in myself and minimize the frequency.

Recently, while surfing online, I came to know about a new site http://www.43things.com/. It’s a very simple site about setting your resolutions for the year ahead. Here, you can list your resolutions one by one, set timelines for their completion, and if require you can set reminders for those resolutions. Since I like to make new year resolutions most of the times, though I hardly follow up to check the fulfillment of most of the resolutions, this site grabs my attention at the very first visit. Also, this year I haven’t made any resolutions during the new year eve, so this site allows me to list some of my tasks (I wouldn’t say resolutions any more) which I’m planning to do during 2011. I’m calling them tasks as being worked in a so called professional environment for more than six years, I’ve become quite comfortable in assigning, updating and resolving tasks :-). So, I’m hoping I will be able to complete these tasks listed in http://www.43things.com/ before the end of this years without any delay of the time line.

I’ve been acting inert in my blog for quite some time. It’s more than a month. There’re many incomplete posts that I started at different times during this period. But somehow I wasn’t able to complete them and ultimately they didn’t got a life in my blog. But yesterday while visiting my dashboard in WordPress, I came across this interesting topic which motivated me quite well to become active in my blog. So, after again slogging a day, finally I’ve decided that I will rejuvenate my inner blogger and blog more often which I failed to do in my two-year stint of blogging till now. So, rather thinking about any topic to write for the blog, I’m going to start without any topic right now. I’ll post in my blog everyday about anything I like/dislike or whatever for all 2011 (the year starts late for me :-)). Though I’ve decided to write every day, I’m sure definitely there going to be some misses. So, I’ll try to write everyday and if possible sometimes even multiple posts in a day so that if I miss someday, it will cover up for that.

Right now I’m aiming to publish at least 100 posts in my blog during this current year. I know it will not be a cake walk for me but I’m sure it’ll be fun as I love blogging and at the same time, it will going to be a wonderful and stimulating experience. Therefore I’m promising to make use of the DailyPost, and the community of other bloggers with similar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

I also hereby take the opportunity to welcome new bloggers and surfers in my blog. If you are new to my blog or if you know about my blog already, I hope you all will encourage me with comments, likes, and good will along the way of my journey.

Today afternoon, I attended a traning session in our office. The session was on Assertiveness and it was one of the impressive trainings that I attended so far. The trainer was good and also the content quality was decent. One of the major reasons to attend this training was to evaluate my assertiveness and I think at the end of the training, I was quite happy what I got. Since I liked the training, I’d like to use my blog to share a few points that I understand/learnt there. So, here I go:

The basic human nature or attitude towards life can be typecasted as Passive, Assertive, and Aggressive, or may be a combination of any of these three types.

A passive person is someone who is very low on self esteem and like to shy away from anything that needs direct participation or responsibility. Such people like to live low key and usually depend on somebody else to make decisions for themselves. In most of the times they are unable to express their opinions or failed to make others understand about their feelings and needs. People with passive attitude are usually very soft spoken and in most cases they prefers a defensive body language or failed to exhibit any direct eye contact.

An assertive person is high on self esteem and understands well about his capabilities. They never shy away from their responsibilities and are alwasys ready with their opinions. They also like to make their own decisions. However, if convincing enough, they will not hesitate to abide by someone else’s decision. They are logical and try to understand the pre and post effects of their actions before acting on something. Assertive people are also very good in listening and understanding others and they can present their opinions, needs, or feelings in a very clear and direct manner. Assertive people have an open body posture, they speak very clearly and confidently, and they like to keep optimum eye contact while participating in a conversation.

Aggressive people are those who like to dominate others be it with their attitudes or their actions. They always like to control others and do not miss any opportunity to criticize or blame others. They want people to follow what they like and get frustrated or angered if somebody opposes their decisions. They never rely on others or think about the repercussions of their actions. Usually an aggressive person talks in a very loud and demanding voice with direct eye-contact, which might sometimes transformed to a continuous stare or gaze to make people they are talking uncomfortable.

Apart from these three basic human nature, another important point that was discussed in today’s training was ‘how important it is to say no to someone yet keeping yourself assertive’. In other words, how to not say “no” when it is needed to say so. Being assertive doesn’t mean that a person never say no to anyone. An assertive person might not agree to someone else’s opinion or dislike a proposal of another person. But the beauty of assertiveness blooms when that person is able to convey that without attempting to hurt or making the other person feel low. In such situations, a direct “no” might offend the other person. Therefore, it is very important for an assertive person to chose his/her words in communicating with others. An assertive person tries to create an environment where not only s/he can win but also the person against him/her can feel the same. More precisely, assertiveness in people can bring in win-win situations for all.